REVIEW: The Last Wish

I’m sure everyone has heard of The Witcher series from the Netflix adaptation that came out recently, or else you know it from the video games. While more and more people tell me they love the books, I fell into the category of knowing it from the video games and being only vaguely aware of the books.

Given the Netflix series, the first book was on sale a while back so I figured, what the hell. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

The Last Wish is a collection of short stories and a novella, originally publishing in Poland as all separate stories, before being collected and spliced together to form this book. I really appreciated this set up as the stories were stand-alone while also flowing nicely into one another. Given that so many fantasy novels are 400 – 800+ page epics, I really liked how not-intimidating this book was. There was no major commitment to remembering everyone or trying to learn maps, and the stories were all at a length where things kept moving. A handful of them are vague fairytale retellings, and the Beauty and the Beast short was by far my favourite, taking things in a direction that was so new for a retelling of this kind and then breaking my heart.

For those who want a little more context about The Witcher, the series follows Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher, as he travels across the world fighting monsters and helping people who have the coin. However, he isn’t a cold-blooded person and will do what is right if he feels it is truly the right thing to do. Geralt isn’t always a welcome sight, though, as a Witcher is someone who has undergone rigorous training, poisoning, and mutation to become more than human. Many see him as a ruthless demon and others lock themselves away in fear, thinking their children will be taken to go through what Geralt has been through.

I’m sure there will be more information regarding that in the other books (my knowledge of it comes from playing Witcher 3 on Switch and they don’t go into much depth about the transformation process) and I look forward to reading more in the second collection of short stories.

The reading order was screwed up in translation so for those who are interested in reading the books, here is a guide: